"Master Builder" Pt.3

Hi, this is John O'Zanting, lead pastor of Evolve Church, and this is the Evolve Church Podcast.

Thanks so much for tuning in.

We hope that you find today's message encouraging and full of hope for wherever you're at.

Well, hey, Evolve fam, I am excited for part three of this Master Builder series.

Let me tell you, I hope you uh have been following along the last couple weeks.

I'm gonna do a quick recap.

But I just want to take a moment, look through this camera, and remind you that God's at work in your life.

God is building a home and he's using you, all of us, to do it.

And that encourages me.

That encourages me when I'm having a great day, but it really encourages me when I'm feeling uh less than great.

And I don't know how you're feeling today.

You might be at home watching this all by yourself, feeling isolated, feeling alone.

You might be with a great big family, crawling all over you on a couch somewhere and feeling like life's pretty good right now.

But this season is taking its toll on so many people, physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually.

I just want to remind you today that God is for you, He's with you, He's building a home, and God is still on the throne, He's still at work.

Jesus is building his church, and there's nothing that can stand against that.

We're in Ephesians chapter 2.

Ephesians 2 · chapter mention

We're looking at this idea of our God being a master builder and what that means and requires from us as the bricks that he's using to build his home.

Ephesians 2, verse 20 in the message translation: God is building a home.

Ephesians 2:20

He's using all of us, irrespective of how we got here, in what he is building.

He used the apostles and the prophets for the foundation.

Now he's using you, plural you, fitting you in brick by brick, stone by stone, with Christ Jesus as the cornerstone that holds all the parts together.

We see it taking shape day after day, a holy temple built by God, all of us built into it, a temple in which God is quite at home.

Two Sundays ago on June 28th, we started this series by saying that we can't allow this sort of individualistic personal belief system to alter our calling and our purpose of belonging to something corporate, something greater, something plural, something more beautiful than just our own life.

This isn't just about your moment with Jesus, this is about you fitting into what Jesus is building, his church, his building, his home.

And we asked this big question in part one are we more focused on following our own plans and building our own personal kingdoms and homes rather than on following the Father's plan and building the Father's home, the Father's kingdom?

So that was week one.

Last week, July 5th, we asked this question: what does it mean to be a brick that God is using to build his home?

And we talked about Lego.

Um, hopefully you enjoyed the Lego analogy.

Um we talked about stacking the crack, and we talked about stacking the crack in relationship to those who are ahead of us in this life journey, those who are beside us in this life journey, and those who are coming up behind us in this life journey.

I gave you homework.

I wonder if you did it.

If you did at least one of those three relational exercises this week, invested in learning from somebody who's ahead of you, sharing life well with those who are beside you or pouring into somebody who's coming up behind you, could you just like put a praise hands or a fire emoji or a heart emoji or a thumbs up emoji in the chat for me right now, just to know that uh when I'm given homework, you're doing it.

I'm not a teacher, maybe I am a teacher, but if you did at least one of those three relational bits of homework, I just want to know about it.

But last week's big question was how are you prioritizing, building, and committed to koinania, that that Greek word, which means fellowship or life together, or the gift of one another.

How are you prioritizing, building, and committed to the gift of one another as a part of Jesus' church?

And we read from Acts 2, verse 42 how the early church, their hearts were mutually linked to one another.

Acts 2:42

Well, I want to pray and then we're gonna get started on today's message.

Father, we just pause in this moment.

We acknowledge that your presence, your Holy Spirit is alive and well within us, around us.

And God, as we go to the Bible today, to the blueprint, would you just open up our hearts and our minds and our lives to what you want to teach us today?

We ask this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

If you have a Bible in front of you today, I would love for you to grab that for me real quick.

Just turn to the book of Luke, chapter six, and we're gonna be in Luke 6 today, um, in a few different places.

So you could just put that open on your coffee table, Luke 6, and uh and we'll get to that.

Um, a few a few weeks ago, my daughter Julia, she's 15, she redecorated her bedroom, and she went from like um, you know, 12-year-old ballet Julia to 15-year-old Boho Chic uh Visco girl Julia.

So um her new bedroom looks great.

And one of the things she wanted to do was uh put a photo wall.

So we printed off all these five by seven pictures and taped them to her wall.

So I got out my level and I made two straight lines, uh, one one vertical, one horizontal, and and then I taped the first photo in place on her wall in line with uh the straight lines.

And I said, This is this is your starting place.

Every other photo has to be straight in comparison to this first picture that I've taped on the wall.

And a short while later I came back into her room and there was a top row that was straight, and then it sort of began to just, you know, the further down she got, uh, the more crooked it looked.

So Julia's watching probably at home with me right now.

Um and so the photos are on the wall, but they're not perfectly level.

We took one photo, we began with a starting place, and everything else was put in place in relative uh relationship to that first picture, right?

You tracking with me?

It kind of got me thinking about, again, being a kid growing up, uh, visiting my dad on job sites.

Uh he was uh a trade, uh carpenter, built homes.

And I remember watching my dad lay bricks when I was a kid.

And to lay to lay a brick, to be a bricklayer is quite an art, quite a craft.

I don't have that skill.

Um, but it requires meticulous care, uh, especially with the that first brick and your starting point, because your wall is going to be level and straight relative to your starting point.

And I love that as Jesus followers, we have a clearly defined starting point.

We have a level, perfect starting point to build our lives on and around.

When we make the weighty and the profound decision to become a Christ follower, we are choosing to align our lives with Jesus.

He becomes our first photo or our first brick, okay?

That's Jesus, that's his place.

Hundreds of years before Jesus was even born, this cornerstone, Jesus, was written about.

And we read in the Bible in Psalm 118, Isaiah 28, Job 38, Zechariah 4, Zechariah 10, all of these prophetic words that were spoken about Jesus the cornerstone before he was even born.

Jesus is our cornerstone.

We read in our in our passage for this series in Ephesians 2 about Jesus Christ the cornerstone.

And uh in Acts 4, verse 11, we read this This Jesus is the stone that you, the builders, have rejected.

Acts 4:11

And now he has become the cornerstone.

And so they're writing, Peter's writing here about the Jewish people that rejected Jesus as a stone, but how Jesus has become the cornerstone.

There is no one else who has the power to save us.

For there is only one name to whom God has given authority by which we must experience salvation, the name of Jesus.

Jesus is our cornerstone.

When we make the weighty and profound decision to become a Christ follower, you may have done that last week's Sunday for the very first time.

You might be in a place of surrender today where your heart is open, maybe for the first time to choose Jesus, to begin to build your life attached to the cornerstone, Jesus.

Maybe you've been following Jesus for a really, really long time.

Wherever you're at in your faith journey, I want to tell you, when we make that decision, what we're doing is we're we're choosing to align our lives with Jesus.

He's our first photo or our first brick, or in this case, we choose to place our brick in line with and in connection to Jesus, the cornerstone.

In the 1830s, a beautiful hymn was penned by Edward Mote.

And it's a hymn I grew up singing called My Hope is Built on Nothing Less.

And I love the lyrics to that hymn as it celebrates Jesus, a cornerstone.

It says, My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus Christ, my righteousness.

I dare not trust the sweetest frame, but wholly lean on Jesus' name.

When darkness veils his lovely face, I rest on his unchanging grace.

In every high and stormy gale, my anchor holds within the veil.

His oath, his covenant, his blood, support me in the whelming flood.

When all around my soul gives way, he then is all my hope and stay.

When he shall come with trumpet sound, oh may I then in him be found.

In him my righteousness alone, faultless to stand before the throne.

On Christ, the solid rock I stand.

All other ground is sinking sand.

All other ground is sinking sand.

In 2012, the musicians at Hillsong Church took that old hymn and they rewrote the melody into a contemporary chorus called Cornerstone.

And uh I love that song.

And they use the same same verses, but they rewrote the chorus and they simply say, Christ alone, cornerstone.

Weak, made strong in the Savior's love.

Through the storm, he is Lord, Lord of all.

Ephesians 2.20, God's building a home.

He's using us all.

He used the apostles and prophets for foundation.

Now he's using you, plural you, fitting you in brick by brick, stone by stone, with Christ Jesus as the cornerstone.

Christ Jesus our cornerstone.

In week one, I shared four questions quickly.

We put them into the homework assignment on June 28th.

The second question was this it's today's big question.

How do we stay attached to the cornerstone, Jesus, and allow Jesus to hold us all together?

Ephesians 2, Jesus Christ as the cornerstone that holds all the parts together.

So if we desire to be a brick in the home that God is building, and we desire to stay connected to and attached to Jesus, our cornerstone, how do we do that?

How do we make that happen?

And so that's kind of what I want to look at in the few minutes we've got left.

And I just have two thoughts for us today, and then one more reading assignment that I want to give this week, connected to today.

But I have two thoughts that I want to share with you to answer this or provide a response, really, to this big question.

How do we stay attached to our cornerstone, Jesus?

How do we allow Jesus to hold us all together?

And my first thought on this or response is this.

Well, we we intentionally look to his example and then we follow it.

That might sound simple, but it there's there's a depth to that statement that we will always be learning and growing in.

Wherever you're at in your faith journey, if this is new, if you've been in this process for years, um, the the journey of surrender to the example of Jesus is a process, not a destination.

And you've heard me say lots, the day I'm perfect is the day I'm dead.

Until then I've got stuff to work on.

How do we intentionally look to the example of Jesus and then follow it?

1 Peter 2, verse 21, it says this in fact, you were called to live this way because Christ also suffered in your place, leaving you his example for you to follow.

1 Peter 2:21

Jesus left us an example to follow.

As our first photo on the wall, as our first brick laid in line, as our cornerstone, he left us an example to follow.

Earlier this year, we created conversation at Evolve around this thought.

Following in the way of Jesus means choosing to embrace not just his ideas and his teachings, but also his lifestyle, how he lived.

Are you being intentional about looking to the example of how Jesus lived and following after it?

All right, Luke 6, here we go.

I want to start reading in verse 46 from Luke 6.

What good does it do for you to say I'm your Lord and master if what I teach you is not put into practice?

Let me describe the one who truly follows me and does what I say.

Okay, so Jesus is about to describe point one, someone who's intentionally looking to his example and following it.

Jesus is about to describe somebody who says, I follow you, and then does what he says.

Here's what it looks like: He is like a man who chooses the right place to build a house and then lays a deep and secure foundation.

When the storms and floods rage against that house, it continues to stand strong and unshaken through the tempest, for it has been wisely built on the right foundation.

Verse 49 But the one who has heard my teaching and does not obey it is like a man who builds a house without laying any foundation whatsoever.

When the storms and floods rage against that house, it will immediately collapse and become a total loss.

Which of these two builders will you be?

It's not enough to hear the teachings of Jesus.

It's not enough to appreciate that Jesus taught great things.

We have to apply it to our lives.

That's what builds the strength into the home that we're helping build.

As a brick, as a stone that the Father is using to hear the teachings of Jesus and to apply it to our lives is how we add strength to this house.

This storm that we're in right now, global pandemic, riots, protests, recession,$343 billion of government deficit.

This is this is a storm, church.

Come on.

This storm has left many people feeling beat.

It's left people with their lives utterly collapsed.

It's left people feeling swept away.

Like we read about it and we say beat up and collapsed.

Swept away.

Have we neglected to stay connected to our cornerstone of Jesus?

I'm just I've been thinking a lot about this this week.

Are we staying connected not just to the idea of Jesus, but to the life that he lived?

Have we drifted away from the gift of time with Jesus?

Where we not only hear his words and his teaching, but allow it to impact how we live.

Today's a big question how do we stay attached to the cornerstone to Jesus and allow him to hold us all together?

My first thought is simply this: by intentionally looking to his example and following it, being a hearer of the word and a doer of the word.

My second thought is this pay attention to the condition of your heart.

Where's your heart at today?

Right before Jesus says to stay connected to a strong cornerstone by hearing his words and doing them, he actually teaches us about our hearts.

Back it up just a little bit.

Luke 6, verse 43 and 40 uh to 45.

Luke 6:43

Here's what Jesus is saying.

You'll never find choice fruit hanging on a bad, unhealthy tree.

And rotten fruit doesn't hang on a good, healthy tree.

Every tree will be revealed by the quality of fruit that it produces.

Figs or grapes will never be picked off of a thorn tree.

People are known in the same way.

Out of the virtue stored in their hearts, good and upright people will produce good fruit.

But out of the evil hidden in their hearts, evil ones will produce what is evil.

For the overflow of what has been stored in your heart will be seen by your fruit and will be heard in your words.

Your life will bear fruit out of the condition of your heart, your heart being your mind and your will and your emotions.

Pay attention to your heart.

As you make decisions this week to be intentional about hearing the words of Jesus and living the words of Jesus, pay attention to the condition of your heart.

Out of the overflow of what you're storing up in your heart, you will bear fruit that other people will see and you will speak words that other people will hear.

The things that we do and the things that we say are connected to what we're storing up in our heart.

Luke 6, 45, people are known in the same way.

Out of the virtue stored in their hearts, good and upright people will produce good fruit, but out of the evil hidden in their hearts, evil ones will produce what is evil.

What evil is hidden in your heart?

And if you're watching this, you're like, wait a second, I'm not evil.

I'm a follower of Jesus.

I've been paid for in full.

I'm in right relationship with God.

What evil?

And we when we talk about evil, um, the picture here is that it's hiding.

It's been stored up, but it's it's hiding in our heart.

There might be residue in our hearts that we're completely unaware of.

Chances are it's it's not like murder or adultery or or like hatred for somebody.

Because we we think about those things as being evil, right?

The typical things we think about when we hear a word like evil, we all have enough pride to go, oh, that's not me.

I'm not, I'm not an evil person.

I must be a good person.

I must just have good things in my heart.

You know, as as a as a pastor at Evolve and in years and years of helping lead in Jesus' church here in the Nation of Canada, I've seen a lot of fruit.

I've heard a lot of words.

In the past few months, I've seen a lot of fruit in people's lives.

I've heard a lot of words come out of people's mouths.

It's so clear to get a glimpse of what God's home, Jesus' church, is storing up in its heart collectively, by the fruit that our lives are producing, by the fruit that our church is producing, and by the words that we're saying as Jesus followers.

Fruit that looks and sounds a lot like fear.

Fruit that looks and sounds a lot like being offended, having my feelings really, really hurt.

Fruit that looks and sounds like unforgiveness.

I'm not gonna forgive that person.

Fruit that looks and sounds like regret.

Fruit that sounds and looks like disappointment.

Listen up, fear, offense, unforgiveness, regret, disappointment.

We we may not think of these things as evil that we're storing up in our hearts, but they are most certainly not congruent with or in alignment with the teachings and the lifestyle of Jesus.

Think about Jesus and his story.

What about the life of Jesus?

Smacks of fear, regret, disappointment, offense, unforgiveness.

Nothing, nothing at all.

If we keep rooting, reading up in Luke, further up in the chapter, we actually hear the words of Jesus as he teaches us so many beautiful things in the Beatitudes and through.

I want to encourage you to read Luke 6 this week in your devotions.

But Jesus teaches us how to be generous when we're hurting and experiencing lack.

Jesus teaches us how to weep and mourn in a way that brings healing.

Jesus teaches us how to experience being alone simply because of our desire to follow Him.

You know, maybe you feel isolated because you're a Christian or rejected by family.

Jesus touches on that, teaches us to love our enemies.

Jesus teaches us to do good for those who hate us, to give away money without expecting anything in return, to be compassionate, to stop judging, to stop condemning other people.

If we just continue to read up in Luke 6, we have to be committed to being built into the home that God imagined and saw, the home that the blueprint of the Bible lays out clearly as the picture for who we're becoming.

We have to be committed to not only hearing the words of Jesus and being obedient to them, but paying close attention to what's in our hearts, the condition of our hearts, our mind, our will, our emotions.

Pay attention to your heart, what's being stored in there.

Before me on the table is a game of Jenga.

And I love this game.

It's a lot of fun.

Anybody can play it.

But I love the picture of individual bricks being stacked against each other.

There's another stack the crack analogy right here.

And what happens when we don't deal with the condition of our hearts?

If you've been offended and hung on to that, if you've got regrets or disappointment from your past and you're hanging on to that, if you have unforgiveness in your life, if you have fear that's in your heart, all of these things, if we just hang on to them, they are going to produce fruit.

They're going to produce behavior and action, they're going to produce words.

And I'm not sure we're going to love what that evil in our hearts is going to produce.

How often does the greater sense of plural us, you, the church, get diminished and weakened by the neglect of the individual you?

And we've all weakened the home by not dealing with our hearts.

We've all brought um questions to the integrity of the home that God is building when we don't deal with our hearts.

When we have fear, it's easy for us to say, I'm no longer a viable brick in the home that God is building.

And so we remove ourselves from the picture.

When we've got offense, we can say, Man, I'm just I'm no longer a viable brick in the home that God is building.

Unforgiveness, regret, disappointment.

I'm no longer a viable brick in the home that God is building.

And so we remove ourselves from the equation.

We think, man, because of what's going on in my heart, this isn't for me anymore.

I don't fit in the church.

I don't belong here.

I don't feel connected here.

What happens when we don't deal with the conditions of our heart, church?

What happens?

What happens when we don't deal and we remove ourselves from the scenario?

The whole thing comes crashing down.

This isn't just about you.

This is about you, plural you.

This is about brick by brick, stone by stone, all of us being built into the home that God is building, the foundation of apostles and prophets, and Jesus Christ as our cornerstone.

Staying connected and attached and affirmed and built up by Jesus.

What happens when we don't deal with the condition of our hearts?

The whole thing comes crashing down.

This isn't just about your individualistic journey, your personal belief story.

This is about you, the church that we're all being built into.

And I'm not talking evolved today, I'm talking about Jesus' church.

Big question: how do we stay attached to the cornerstone, Jesus, and allow Jesus to hold us all together?

This isn't exhaustive, this is just two thoughts that I want to respond.

Intentionally look to his example and follow it, and pay attention to the condition of your heart.

I've got homework for you this week.

It's another five-day reading plan.

And hopefully you've been finding, you know, seven to ten minutes every morning to just five out of seven days go through the plans we've been sharing with you.

You can scan this QR code for this week's devotional plan from the UVersion Bible app.

It's a plan called Love Your Enemies, a How-to Guide.

And I love this devotional plan because it's practical and it helps us deal with the condition of our hearts when it comes to forgiving other people, the expectations we have on other people, how to trust God in relationship to other people.

And I think it's going to set somebody free this week.

Somebody's watching today that just you just know you haven't been, you haven't been intentional about following Jesus' example and reading his thoughts and words and about his lifestyle, but also putting it into practice.

And you've neglected the condition of your heart.

You've allowed offense and fear and regret and disappointment to just consume you in this season of isolation.

Shake off church, shake it free.

You are a vital, viable, beautiful, gorgeous, productive, powerful, purpose-filled stone as a part of the home that God is building.

So I want you to go through this Bible plan.

Five out of seven days this week.

Let's do it together.

Come on, you can do this.

Let me encourage you.

Carve out time to spend with Jesus.

Read through these scripture verses and the thoughts in this devotion.

It won't take you long.

Just put it in your calendar.

All right.

I want to close with a few verses from 1 Peter chapter 2.

1 Peter 2 · chapter mention

As we spent a little bit of time in Luke 6 today, in this uh this parable about a house being built on sand or on the foundation, on the solid rock, right?

As we've read through ancient lyrics from a hymn, as we've talked about the Beatitudes, as we looked at all these beautiful thoughts today connected to how we stay attached to cornerstone.

I want to close with this.

Keep coming to him who is the living stone.

Keep coming.

If you turned away, come back.

If you step sideways, come back.

Keep coming.

Though he was rejected and discarded by men, but chosen by God and is priceless in God's sight.

Come, this is the invitation, come and be his living stones, who are continually being assembled into a sanctuary for God.

For now you serve as holy priests, offering up spiritual sacrifices that he readily accepts through Jesus Christ.

You are in good standing with God the Father.

For it says in Scripture, look, I lay a cornerstone, Jesus, in Zion, a chosen and priceless stone.

And whoever believes in him, the stone has a name, whoever believes in this cornerstone will certainly not be disappointed.

Come on.

As believers, you know Jesus' great worth.

Indeed, his preciousness is imparted to you.

But for those who do not believe, the stone that the builders rejected and discarded has now become the cornerstone.

And a stone that makes them stumble and a rock to trip over, well, they keep stumbling over this message because they refuse to believe it.

And this they were destined to do.

And as I close, I just want to say, you are not destined to reject the cornerstone.

You were designed, handcrafted, knit together in your mother's womb, called with a purpose, handcrafted by a creative creator, Father God, who loves every single one of his sons and daughters, and invites us into this invitation to be his living stones, connected to Jesus, our cornerstone.

That's the invitation for us today.

Let's stay connected to Jesus, our cornerstone.

Let's be intentional about not just hearing his words, but living them out this week and every day.

Let's pay close attention to the condition of our hearts and what we've stored up there.

Let's work through some things this week.

Let's spend some time in koinania, Christian fellowship, right relationship with other brothers and sisters in this beautiful thing called family church.

Come on, you're not alone.

Let's press in.

Thank you so much for listening to today's message.

If you're ever in the Edmonton area, pop by for a visit.

And if you need any more information, visit EvolveChurch.com.

We hope to see you soon.